SIX LIVES real stories of homelessness During those years the awards have celebrated an eclectic range of pioneering projects to prevent homelessness, improve services to homeless people, and tackle the disadvantages caused by homelessness. Projects have come from London boroughs, housing associations, voluntary sector organisations, the NHS and, often, a partnership of some or all of these.

Of course the diversity of the projects and the range of organisations involved reflect the complex nature of modern-day homelessness in our city. While London continues to thrive as a global capital, we cannot ignore the fact that many people are still struggling to access basic shelter and support. Responding to this challenge, this year’s Andy Ludlow Award entries truly demonstrate what can be achieved through effective partnerships and positive collaboration.

The range of challenges that homelessness presents, and the quality and quantity of projects the awards attract, make judging them no easy task. But once again our panel has been assiduous in carefully sifting the relative merits of many excellent projects to find us the ‘best of the best’ that constitute our final shortlist.

For that I am grateful to our judges: Simon Dow, Chairman of the London Housing Foundation (Ludlow sponsors) and Chief Executive of The Guinness Partnership; Diana Fawcett, Director of Operations, Shelter; Lizzie Clifford, Head of Housing and Planning, London Councils; Laura Johnson, Director of Housing, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; Clare Kiely, UK Grants Manager at Comic Relief and Ian Brady, Deputy Director of the Troubled Families Team at DCLG.

But however complex the issues may seem to be, however many organisations are involved in delivering services, in the end homelessness is about people.

The six people profiled in this publication have all in their own ways experienced what it means to be homeless in London, and all have in one way or another benefited from the committed and innovative work of our finalists.

The projects we commend with these Awards are about making people’s lives better, and I can think of nothing more worthy of recognition than that. Congratulations to everyone involved in all of the shortlisted projects, and I hope you enjoy this short publication.

Mayor Sir Steve Bullock London Councils’ executive member for housing She still has a hint of an Aussie twang in her voice, a remnant of the years she spent down under before returning to her native west London. But Gerry is no longer down and out, in fact she’s happier than she’s ever been, living in a flat she cherishes, with a cat she dotes on, a life full of purpose and a recent promotion in a job she loves.

“I still have nightmares about being homeless”, she says. “I haven’t forgotten, but I’m glad I turned a corner.”

Her journey has turned a lot of corners over the years, from west London to eastern Australia and back via Feltham duck pond; with two husbands, several successful businesses and three distinct phases of her life.

“The person I am now is different to the person I was back in Australia and totally different to the girl who was living on the streets. But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that I’m a survivor.”

In phase one Gerry grew up in Hounslow and got married young.

“My first marriage wasn’t a great success”, she says, “My husband was violent and I was unhappy, but we were business partners and we bought a pub with rooms that did very well.”

It was at the pub that she employed an Aussie barman, who she fell in love with.

“I spent my 50th birthday on the streets, with an overdose of vodka and painkillers. A passing doctor resuscitated me. When I came round in hospital I just thought to myself ‘Well, Gerry, you couldn’t even do that right.’” “I left everything to be with him” she says, “I just left with a suitcase and started a new life.”

Gerry’s knack for business and hard work put her in good stead though. “We got jobs in bars initially, then we became bar managers and then we ended up running a very successful pub in Windsor. After that we moved to Australia where I set up my own catering business, it was doing very well.”

But after more than a dozen years in Australia her life was to dramatically change again.

“One of my sisters flew out for a holiday with us in Australia. Unknown to me she started a relationship with my husband. I found out two weeks after she’d gone back to England, when my husband told me he was going to set up home with her.”

For Gerry the double sense of betrayal was almost too much to bear. “My whole world collapsed and I took to my bed with a cask of wine.”

Several casks later, Gerry found sympathy running out down under. “In the end my Australian family got fed up with me and bought me a one-way ticket to England. I had enough cash on me to get a cab to Feltham, I just returned to familiar ground”, she says. “The council booked me into a disgusting, dirty B&B. I stood all night looking out of the window and in the morning I went and sat by the duck pond in Feltham park.”

Phase two of Gerry’s life was about to start. “I got talking to some drinkers. I bought half a bottle of vodka and said: ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ That became my life for the next five years.”

“Looking back I don’t know how I survived it”, she says. “I didn’t seek help from any kind of authority, because I was frightened I suppose. I only looked for help from my fellow drinkers, there were 12 of us. Now there’s just me and one other guy who I still see shuffling along. The other 10 are all dead now.”

It’s little wonder that Gerry considers herself a survivor. Her life reached crisis point in 2008. “I was walking down the street when I collapsed. I’d had a stroke and I had renal failure. I only had two bits of paper on me, one of which had my brother’s phone number on it. The hospital contacted him for permission to turn off my life support – but my brother saved my life.”

It was a long haul back from the brink of death for Gerry. “I had to learn everything from new, I had to learn to walk, to talk, to feed myself. But in rehab I found I was wanted again, for the first time in a long time. Rehab worked for me.”

And the third phase of Gerry’s life began when her mentor suggested she might like to get involved with Ealing Supporting People.

A natural at one to one engagement, it was while Gerry was volunteering as a peer consultant that she was told about Groundswell and the sort of work they did. “Initially I was dubious because I wanted to move away from homelessness”, she says “But I went along and instantly fell in love with the whole package. I gave up all my other volunteering to become a peer health advocate with Groundswell.”

As an advocate Gerry would visit various hostels and set-up regular, informal coffee mornings that the sector term ‘in-reach’ work. “Things like coffee mornings are a bridge between residents and services and, because we were peers, they’d open up to us about anything. We are there to listen to them and, by coming along regularly, we become part of them, rather than ‘the establishment’. We’d deal with clients’ hospital appointments, or dentists, support them, sort out transport, advocate for them, maybe go for a coffee afterwards, that sort of relationship.”

“I wish I’d known about this kind of service when I was on the streets.”

After three years with Groundswell Gerry has recently become a paid project worker for the organisation working, among other things, on the TB van that visits hostels to offer free instant screenings. She’s a valued employee and the feeling cuts both ways. “Groundswell have allowed me to grow”, she says, “because, to them, we’re not just recovering drunks or whatever, we’re people.”

Groundswell’s homeless health peer advocacy service, which offers one-to-one support and practical help for homeless people to attend health appointments, has been shortlisted for the 2014 Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards. It takes a fair bit of self-motivation and determination to do an Open University course, particularly for a homeless 22 year-old (and don’t worry, we’ll explain the reference to the convent later). But self-motivation and determination are two things Nana is not in short supply of – especially when it comes to her education.

Nana has a diverse educational CV that takes in boarding school in Ghana, secondary school in London, sixth form in Northampton, a year at the University of Kent (to which she commuted from London, daily), and now the OU.

To understand the peripatetic nature of her educational CV though, as well as the importance she attaches to her studies, you have to go back to an extraordinary and life changing decision her father made a little over 10 years ago.

“My father had lived in the UK for a while, he was cab driver, but he was living back in Ghana and that was where I was born”, she explains. “When I was 12 my father was going to the UK to visit family and he suggested I... came with him to see what England was like.

“But when my father went back to Ghana he left me here with a family friend. Since he left in 2002 he hasn’t been back. I think he’s in America now, although I have no idea really. At the time I didn’t understand the consequence or what I was going to face because I was only 12 years-old.”

Despite the fact she felt somewhat lost at the time, Nana was determined to continue her education and make the most of school.

“I enrolled in a local school and I loved it. It was a great time, the teachers were amazing.

“When I started I had some trouble as I could only speak a little bit of English, but I got a lot of assistance and took advantage of all the help I could get. I took every opportunity to be active at school. I got involved in everything, a lot of sports; I even played rugby for Lambeth at the London Youth Games.”

But her zeal for virtually every after-hours school activity was fuelled by more than her natural enthusiasm.

“My home life was quite difficult” she admits. “I wasn’t happy at home. They weren’t very nice to me and to be honest school was a haven. I’d always stay as late as possible. I was happy and safe at school.”

With things not working out with the family she had been left in the care off, Nana began to live a nomadic life, staying with a network of friends, often connected through her church.

“I must have lived in about 12 different addresses since I became homeless”, she says. “The longest was with a friend in Kennington who put me up while I was doing my GCSEs, I’m still very close to her. But after I did my GCSEs I moved to Northampton to be with a family member who had come over from Ghana for a while. I did the applications and the interviews and I managed to get a place at Northampton School for Girls. I did the whole thing myself.”

“After sixth form, I got a place at the University of Kent”, she says, “but I ran into problems with my status.”

The knotty problem of Nana’s immigration status goes all the way back to her father’s decision to leave her here in 2002.

“I explained to Kent that my papers were at the Home Office and they said that I could start. I was living with a family in Dulwich at the time and I commuted to Canterbury for my lectures. But when it got to exam time and my status was still outstanding I had to drop out.”

Losing her place at Kent was a bitter blow to Nana, but her luck in other respects was about to change for the better.

“I had some issues with the people I was living with”, she explains, “And I had to move on again. I was looking on the internet for shelters and I came across the Missionaries of Charity; they had a bed available. You could only stay three months but it gave me a base and that was when I got in touch with Praxis.”

And it was thanks to Praxis’ temporary homes project that Nana was referred to the convent she has called home now for more than a year. She has a room of her own, a shared bathroom and dines with the sisters. It is peaceful, tranquil and safe.

“Living in a convent is a bit different”, she smiles, “But to me this is home. When I came here I was so stressed, my hair was falling out and I was depressed. To come here and to be welcomed by the sisters, to receive their love and attention has been just amazing. This is the most stable home I have had since I have been in the UK. They have helped me so much.”

And now she has a place to call home, she feels ready and able to make her case to the Home Office (who have recently granted Nana an extension to present further evidence in support of her application), and look to the future.

“When I get my papers”, she says, “I’d like to enrol in a traditional university and finish my law degree. I want to go into law, maybe human rights or immigration, I’m not sure yet. But I love my studies, I love living in London and I want to be independent”.

Praxis was founded in 1983, through a legacy of the late Robert Kemble, to pursue his vision of social justice rooted in his Christian faith. Praxis’ temporary homes project supports vulnerable homeless migrants by providing access to temporary accommodation, often through volunteer hosts or faith communities, as a means to help resolve immigration issues. The project has been shortlisted for the 2014 Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards. Twenty-one year-old Brown has just completed the first week of his music and production degree with the University of Westminster, and you can’t help but get the feeling he has found his vocation and a productive channel for his energies. Which wasn’t always the case.

Brown enjoyed growing up a stone’s throw from King’s Cross station, but while he found his schooldays “alright” it’s fairly clear that sometime after his dad left home he started to drift and school failed to hold his full attention.

“I wasn’t doing particularly well at school” he admits, “I was getting into a little bit of trouble, not a lot, but my mum decided to send me to live with my uncle in Newark-on-Trent (a market town in Nottinghamshire). That was different.”

One difference was that he was only black person in the school.

“It must have been weird for them as well”, he says. “Some of them were cool, but the way some of them acted it was like they’d never seen a black kid before.”

Brown concedes he wasn’t that interested in school – “I used to bunk a lot. My uncle didn’t know that, but I did. I used to bunk off with a couple of mates and some older kids. Just riding bikes, running around town, a bit of mischief.”

Brown’s sojourn in Northamptonshire only lasted a year anyway when his uncle moved abroad and he returned to north London where he felt more at home.

“It was more fun for me” he says, “A bigger group of friends, people from my estate, everyone knew each other. I learned a lot more” – but he wasn’t just learning the curriculum.

“It’s different in Camden, it’s more important who you know and who you don’t know. I learned about people, about what people to talk to, what people to stay away from.”

“I was still getting in trouble, not a lot, but things like lateness, talking back, stuff like that.”

Brown did well enough at school to stay on to the sixth form where he studied for a BTEC followed by a course in youth work, but the ‘mischief’ side of his life was escalating.

“I got nicked”, he says, “Someone told me that you couldn’t do youth work if you’d been arrested, so I dropped out.”

A chance encounter at a youth club switched Brown onto a two year jewellery apprenticeship in Hatton Garden, which pleased his mum.

“When the course finished they said you could go to university to carry on, but although I enjoyed it, I didn’t want to do another four years.”

It wasn’t that Brown was short of energy or ideas, the trouble was, by his own admission, he was getting into “the wrong kinds of stuff.”

The years between school and his twentieth birthday saw Brown “dabble in a lot of different jobs”. Some of the jobs were to keep his mum off his back, but also he was looking for something outside the life he was living.

“I did want a stable job”, he says. “When you are out making what you can get, you can get lost inside that world, it can mess you up. So I did want a job for a sense of stability, of security. But because they were easy-to-get jobs, every job was the same. I’d just think I could be making more money in less time on the street.”

One job was actually on the street. “I did fundraising for a while, I was one of the guys who stand on the street wearing a bib saying ‘excuse me, can I talk to you about this charity?’ I wasn’t the best, I’m not going to lie. I was smoking a lot of cannabis and I wouldn’t really want to talk to people. So I didn’t excel at that.”

Brown’s habit of getting high and partying was wearing on his mother.

“My mum would see me coming in late and she was stressing, so I started staying out more, two days, three days whatever. In the end she got to the end of it, she’d had enough.”

Brown stayed with a friend for a while but that couldn’t last and when he ran out of options he took to sleeping out.

“I’d just stay on the block”, he says, “I’d be out till about five in the morning, waiting for it to get light, then I’d go and knock at a friend’s and see if anyone was awake.”

But when Brown decided he needed to seek help, he was fortunate to be pointed in the direction of the New Horizon Youth Centre, which to come full circle is located on the street where he was born.

“I got help from a lot of people here. They put me in touch with Foundation66, who helped me with my weed smoking. They helped me fill out some housing forms and they got me into this shared house where I’m living now. If I need help with anything, I come here.”

Through connections at New Horizons, which has its own music studio, Brown got on a music course that culminated with a performance at the Roundhouse.

Now living in secure housing, on good terms with his mum and just starting out on his university degree, Brown is now fully focussed on his future.

“Since I came here I have got on track. They hooked me up with a bursary and I still get mentoring here. I’m writing something every day. It’s a good feeling. Watch out for my name.”

New Horizon’s London Youth Gateway brings together the experience and resources of several homeless and voluntary sector agencies to give young homeless people access to a wide range of individually tailored services to rebuild their lives, from finding accommodation to life skills training and vocational development. The project has been shortlisted for the 2014 Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards. Patrick is recalling the decision he made nearly 20 years ago to leave the rural life in Ireland and try his fortune in London - where he became a familiar face as a barman in various Irish pubs across north London before ill health and ill fortune found him homeless and in hospital.

But his story actually begins on the south coast.

“I was born in Hastings, of all places, in 1955. My mother died when I was born, so my father sent me to my grandparents in Kerry, which was where I grew up.”

“I did quite a few jobs after I left school”, he explains, “The usual bits and pieces. I worked for the council on the roads, I did some construction work and I worked in a hardware shop for a while. Then I got a job in the pub in the village where I worked for about six or seven years.”

But while Patrick was content enough, his health was already becoming an issue.

“I had Crohns disease, but back in the 1970s in Ireland it wasn’t well known. They originally did an operation for my appendix. Then, when they later diagnosed it as Crohns, they did another operation. But I started getting blood clots and I started getting leg ulcers too.”

His poor health was compounded by the sad passing of both his grandparents within two months of each other. The sudden changes in his life led to a reappraisal, which is when he decided to give London a go. But London didn’t want to give him much of a go, at least initially. “I stayed with my step brother for a while, he was a caretaker at a big house over at Hyde Park. I bought the Evening Standard every day looking for work, but I couldn’t find anything. I’d bought a bit of money over with me but it soon ran out.

“In the end I didn’t have a penny left. Then an agency got me a job in a pub in Kilburn and so ever since then I was doing bar work.” From Kilburn to Kingsland to Dalston, Patrick worked the bars. The jobs weren’t highly paid but they were all live-in, so accommodation was never a problem, as long as he pulled the pints. But while he was working he was neglecting his health, in particular the persistent leg ulcers that caused him constant pain.

Rather than address his health issues though Patrick ignored the agony, in part by adopting a habit of walking on his toes as a way of easing the pain. He did that so long he’s now got a permanent limp.

And while his health was on a downward spiral so was his luck. “I was working in a pub in Dalston, it’s a noodle bar now but it used to be a big Irish pub. It was a great pub at the start but then it started going down a bit and then the drug dealers moved in. The cops raided it and the pub got closed down.

“So I went to another pub I used to drink in and started as a live-in barman there”. But when the landlord decided to renovate, that too became untenable.

“I thought I’d be ok to stay”, he says, “But I should have known better. It turned into a building site and I had to move out when the water and electricity was turned off.”

Patrick was fast running out of options. He had a network of friends from the pubs that he could wrangle a night here and a night there with, sofa surfing, and a former landlord let him sleep in the bar a couple of nights, but the stress was taking further toll on his already poor health.

“I got a chesty cold and I felt really weak. My legs were swollen and I couldn’t really walk. I ended up in hospital and got moved to the Royal London in Whitechapel where I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).”

Patrick didn’t tell the hospital about his circumstances, but thankfully a visiting friend told a nurse he was homeless.

“After that Paulina came to the hospital to see me every couple of days. She’s been my mentor ever since. She took all my details and she helped me to sort out somewhere to stay when I left the hospital.”

Today Patrick is in temporary housing back in the Hackney he knows so well – “The only time I was ever in Tower Hamlets was when I was in hospital” - it’s basic, but it’s safe and secure and he’s now bidding for social housing.

“I’ve been quite far down the queue so far, but the last one I bid for I was number 25, so I’ll keep on trying.”

With his health on the mend and safe housing secured, Patrick is looking to the future once again, “I think I’m going to go on a computer course”, he says. “I’ve never been on a computer in my life, you might as well show me a Boeing 747. But I’ve been meaning to do that ever since I packed in the bar work.”

The Routes to Roots service for hospital patients in Tower Hamlets, provided by Providence Row in partnership with LB Tower Hamlets, who commissioned the service, and the Royal London Hospital Homeless Pathway Team, supports out of borough patients at risk of rough sleeping on discharge to return to their home borough and access housing and other services. Routes to Roots has been shortlisted for the 2014 Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards. “Depression is really unheard of in African families”, explains Seyi, “And if it is heard of, then it’s swept under the carpet. So for my parents it was really tough, because they didn’t understand what was going on at all. And it was tough for me, because I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t understand.”

It was at the start of his second year of sixth form that Seyi came so close to suicide and his education, or rather some very high educational expectations, were for a long time at the heart of a deep unhappiness.

“My parents were very educationally focused”, he says. “They wanted me to go to a grammar school so I sat the 11-plus and I ended up going to St Olaves in Orpington, even though we lived in Kidbrooke at the time. I had to get up at about 6.15 every morning. But I liked school and the teachers were good.”

But while Seyi was a diligent pupil, when it came to GCSEs he narrowly missed out on the marks needed to get into the school’s sixth form.

He describes his parent’s reaction as “disappointed”, in a way that says that’s only the half of it. “They thought ‘you’re a bright lad, how did this happen?’”

Seyi felt the hopes of his parents weigh heavy on his shoulders.

“From that point onwards I really went into a spiral of self-doubt”, he says. The family looked for other sixth forms and settled upon one in Sidcup where Seyi studied for A levels in maths, biology, chemistry and physics. At the end of his first year he got straight Bs in his AS levels. And while those grades may have been considered very good by most people, for Seyi they simply compounded a growing sense of failure.

“Something clicked inside me and I just wasn’t happy with myself.”

It was at this point that he found himself standing on the edge of multi-story car park.

“The police came and I was taken to hospital where I was diagnosed with depression. I went back to school afterwards, but I didn’t study very well.”

And when his parents discovered messages on his phone that suggested Seyi was falling into depression again, they decided to take action of their own.

“As a result I was sent to Nigeria for two months, which was meant to be a ‘cure’. I know they meant well but unknown to them it was the worst decision they ever made. Getting sent to Nigeria was the worst thing for me.”

Despite his unhappy time in Nigeria, Seyi was at least able to talk to an aunt “who kept me sane” and he began to think about either taking a year out, or perhaps resitting his exams.

But his parents had other plans in mind.

“My parents phoned to say they had got me a place at the University of Bedfordshire to study Biomedical Sciences. I was guilt tripped into taking the offer. I didn’t want to go and I didn’t like it.”

Seyi sought solace in drinking, something he had little experience of, or tolerance for.

“For the first two months I was drinking nearly every day, then anxiety started kicking-in, so I just upped and left.”

Deciding he needed to get as far away from uni as possible, Seyi randomly picked on Sunderland as a destination, bought a coach ticket and headed off.

In Sunderland he met a girl in a club that said he could stay. They fell into a relationship. The relationship was a disaster. Seyi swallowed his pride and phoned his father, “who was more than happy to come and get me.”

Back home there was a lot of pressure to go back to college but Seyi was set on an NVQ in customer service with an apprenticeship at a city hotel, “the best thing I ever did”.

Unfortunately his career was knocked off path by recurring depressive episodes. “I screwed it up and they had to let me go, which is something I regret to this day.”

Seyi was still living with his parents but was finding living at home increasingly problematic.

He’s keen to stress that he doesn’t consider himself to have been truly ‘homeless’, because his parents always offered a roof over his head, but more and more often he found himself out on the streets of London at night.

“I’d usually head into central London, where I’d stay the night. I just needed to be out, to trying to get things straight in my head. That was more to do with my sense of anger.”

Around this time a solution offered itself when a Connexions adviser told Seyi about the peer landlord scheme being run by Thames Reach. Invited to an interview Seyi met the landlord of the shared house in Bellingham he now lives in.

Things have worked out so well that he has assumed the role of peer landlord himself now.

“I was a bit worried at first”, he admits. “I was a bit naive about things like water bills and TV licenses, but the responsibility is good for me and when I’m ready to leave I’ll know much more about managing things like bills and how to budget.”

Today, Seyi is not only making a success of being a peer landlord, he’s also working, is rebuilding his relationship with his parents - and is keen to get back into education.

“I want to retake my exams, go back to university, study maths and get a good job.”

“It’s weird that that’s what my parents have always been telling me to do, but it’s a very different feeling, wanting to do something yourself, rather than to please others”.

Thames Reach’s Peer Landlord London scheme supports tenancies for people with a shared background of homelessness to gain a level of independence and experience with a peer landlord who is able to act as a positive role model. The scheme has been shortlisted for the 2014 Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards. Lois is a service manager for Hestia, managing five refuges across two west London boroughs that are sanctuary to about 33 women and 40 to 50 children at any one time. That’s a significant responsibility. It’s a good job she knows what she’s talking about.

Prior to being service manager, Lois had been a team leader. Before that she was a frontline refuge worker. Before that she was a volunteer with Victim Support; and before that a survivor of domestic abuse.

“Myself and my children went into a refuge when I was in my early 20s. It was a refuge a health visitor had told me about, things were very different then. It was what I’d call a ‘sticking plaster’ approach. So it was ‘there, there, have a cup of tea, everything’s going to be better’. It was dormitory-style sleeping, there were mice, no sort of health and safety then and certainly no idea of a ‘person-centred’ approach. That’s just how it was then.”

Like most women who flee domestic violence, Lois found herself homeless and it was the refuge that helped her find the move-on accommodation that would help her start her life anew.

“That was what enabled me to become more independent. I started to become more confident and I realised I wanted to get back into education.

“It’s not just about being free from abuse, it’s about women being able to achieve autonomy, empowering them and letting them know ‘There’s a big world out there and you are a part of it.’” “I did some basic courses to start with and then built up from there. I did a two year course on health and social care that I passed with distinction. I realised then I could ‘do’ it - and from then on I couldn’t be stopped.”

The whole approach may be different today to the ‘mend and make do’ shelters initially pioneered in London in the 1970s, but the journey is still a long one for most women.

“Going from being a victim to ‘I’ve survived’ is a long time, it doesn’t happen overnight. You’re still recovering when you leave [a refuge] and you’re still picking up the pieces for your family and trying to be an individual.”

Of course a refuge must first and foremost be a place of safety - and today that means advising women about things like social media activity and smartphones that may contain tracking devices – but Lois is as keen to talk to women about their dreams as the risks they face. And while there’s no magic shortcut, at least today there is a lot more awareness of and support for the journey.

“The whole package of supporting women who have fled domestic violence, coupled with a very service-user focus, means we are able to really embed recovery a lot sooner than somebody who has gone through the ‘sticking plaster’ route.”

As an example of the sort of holistic approach on offer, Lois points to the close working relationship between the various agencies that work together to support the physical and emotional wellbeing of women and children. From the children and families services that offer support to children who may have witnessed abuse; to the health visitors, who provide an opportunity for women to talk freely about their health needs (often abusers will have attended medical appointments to control what is said). And things like the Better Life Forum (Hestia’s independent service user body) and the range of recent talks arranged on topics as diverse as breast cancer and how to start your own business.

“It’s a holistic approach to addressing the women’s particular needs and it’s a process. We deal with what needs to be addressed. So, in the first couple of weeks a woman might be talking about needing to be safe, to have somewhere to stay, about having access to finance. Hopefully after six months we’re talking about education, about getting a job, and ‘what are your aspirations’? This year we had a woman who passed her degree while she was in the refuge.”

Most women entering a refuge are de facto homeless as a result of the violence, often in possession of few or no resources and facing the prospect of rebuilding their life from scratch.

“Women often arrive with next to nothing”, says Lois. “They have left the perpetrator, they may still love him. The children have lost their father or a father figure, they’ve lost their family, their connections, their neighbours, the friends they went to school with, their local park. Often they will arrive with just the clothes they are in, no toys, no spare nappies.

“When people arrive destitute we can provide the emotional and practical support, and we can push them gently. But it’s their future and it’s down to them to rebuild their lives and that’s hard.”

A crucial milestone on the road to becoming a survivor comes when the family is able to move-on from the refuge to their own accommodation.

Lois is full of praise for the housing departments Hestia works with, “They have a thorough understanding of Domestic Violence, they have policies in place and they are very compassionate and understanding.”

“But,” she adds “They can only give the housing they have access to.”

These days that will normally mean a private lease, rather than permanent social housing, meaning higher rents and less security.

“If I could change one thing”, says Lois, “it would be that women suffering Domestic Violence should be given the option of council property. Woman who are fleeing Domestic Violence want to work, they want to contribute to the community, they want to show their children ‘we’re a family unit, let’s move forward’. But in London private rents are so high. A woman on benefits and £200-£300 a week rent faces some real obstacles to getting back into work. It makes it harder to see a bright future. So, more council housing please, that’s the answer to giving women fleeing domestic abuse a more secure future.”

Hestia’s Children and Family Service, which last year provided practical and emotional support to 450 children and their mothers, has been shortlisted for the 2014 Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards. After he died, London’s housing directors decided to set up the Andy Ludlow Awards as a lasting legacy and testament to his tireless work with the homeless. Sixteen years on, the awards – run by London Councils – go from strength to strength.

Today, the Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards are widely recognised as the country’s leading homelessness awards. The awards recognise and highlight innovative practice in the homelessness sector.

The Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards are sponsored by the London Housing Foundation - a trust that supports homelessness charities and agencies - the 33 London councils and Shelter. The awards are supported by Inside Housing magazine.

The awards are open to council departments, registered social landlords, London NHS and health-related organisations, voluntary organisations or a partnership of these agencies. Projects must have been running for a minimum of six months.

The judges look for evidence of work that:

- improves services to homeless people, or people at risk of becoming homeless
- prevents homelessness
- tackles disadvantage caused by homelessness
- takes an innovative or unique approach to tackling the above issues
- can be replicated across London.

If you’re interested in finding out when the 2015 awards open for entries, email emma.stewart@londoncouncils.gov.uk putting ‘Ludlow 2015’ in the subject line.

Visit www.andyludlowawards.org.uk

Andy Ludlow was a pioneering director of housing and social services at Haringey council. Realising the impact that one had on the other, Andy was at the forefront of developing an ‘holistic’ approach to housing and social services in his borough. He also believed in bringing services to the people, rather than making them travel to get them.

Andy actually joined the council as an energy conservation officer in 1978, but was always passionate about social housing and quickly moved into this area. After various promotions, Andy was appointed Haringey’s director of housing in 1989 and, following a restructuring of departments, became the borough’s director of housing and social services in 1993.

Just before he was to move from Haringey to be director of housing at Enfield council, Andy died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage at only 51. Andy was much loved and renowned across the capital for his commitment to local residents and for treating people with dignity. His funeral was attended by around 1,000 people. 2014 SHORTLIST

FINALISTS Groundswell UK - Homeless Health Peer Advocacy Services See Gerry’s story p04

Praxis Community Projects - Temporary Homes See Nana’s story p08

Thames Reach - Peer Landlord London See Seyi’s story p20

COMMENDED PROJECTS Hestia Housing and Support - Children and Family Service See Lois’s story p24

London Borough of Tower Hamlets - Routes to Roots See Patrick’s story p16

New Horizon Youth Centre - London Youth Gateway See Brown’s story p12 The Andy Ludlow Homelessness Awards are supported by: